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Social Contexts

and Responses to Risk


Network (SCARR)

Working Paper
2004/1

Literature Review:
Sociology and Risk
Jens O. Zinn

Sociology and Risk

Zinn

Contact
Author:

Jens O. Zinn

Address: SSPSSR, Cornwallis Building NE, University of Kent,


Canterbury, CT2 7NF
EMail:

j.zinn@kent.ac.uk

Tel.:

0044 (0)1227 82 4165

ESRC priority network Social Contexts and Responses to Risk (SCARR)


School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR)
Cornwallis Building NE
University of Kent at Canterbury
Canterbury,
Kent CT2 7NF, UK
http://www.kent.ac.uk/scarr/

This literature review starts from the middle of the 1990s, when
publications summarizing the state of the art of risk research were
published (e.g. Krimsky/Golding 1992, The Royal Society 1992,
Krohn/Krcken 1993) and social sciences broadened the debate about
risks beyond the technical considerations of the engineers and the natural
scientists, thus explaining the divergence between public and expert
views of risk (Krimsky/Golding 1992, 355).
The state of the art of sociological risk research in the early 1990s was a
set of different concepts and empirical results rather than a general
theoretical approach (e.g. Japp 2000). The two central theories of
sociological risk research which started to dominate the field in the early
1990s were the Risk and Culture approach of Douglas and Wildavsky
(1982) and the Risk Society approach of Ulrich Beck (1986, 1992). The
following overview of sociological publications on risk or risk research
focuses on the main stream of argumentation in sociological conceptions
and research on risk in period up to the present, with an emphasis on
noteworthy contributions and developments.
This overview has some limitations. The first limitation is the time frame
which considers only publications since 1995. The second limitation is
that I will rather focus on theoretical and conceptual questions than on
empirical results. The third limitation concerns the journals taken into
consideration. You will find a list on the end of this review paper together
with the books and certain articles considered.
The review is divided in several sections. The first section gives a general
overview of the different approaches and conceptual ideas found in recent
publications. The second section gives an overview of the previous
sociological literature.

I. Sociological approaches to risk


I have divided the sociological literature on risk into three main
approaches. Many of the sociological publications still refer to the idea of
Risk Society (Beck, 1986, 1992), today more often with the intention of
contrast than an enthusiastic agreement, but there are also some articles
which develop more elaborated concepts of risk and modernization. This
research follows a broader concept of uncertainty in a societal perspective
and expands beyond the original narrow perspective of the Risk Society
on environmental hazards. Risk is generally defined as a strategy
referring to instrumental rationality. But it is interpreted as one strategy
among others to transform uncertainty regarding future expectations to a

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(rational) manageable entity. In this perspective the future is defined as


uncertain in principle and the question is by which strategies this
uncertain future could be managed.
These approaches are usually based on the central assumption of a
significant change in modernity, the end of unambiguity (Bauman 1991),
and a return of uncertainty. For this reason I group this kind of risk
research under the label Reflexive Modernization (Bon 1995).
Significant in this context is the assumption that it is not risk but
uncertainty should be the basis of analysis so that risk is seen as one
specific way to make an uncertain future manageable that is valid on the
organisational and institutional level as well as on the individual level.
Another part of literature refers to the ideas of Cultural Theory. It was
originally brought into the discussion by Mary Douglas and gained much
prominence in the grid/group scheme of Douglas and Wildavsky (1982).
While the quantitative standardised research of the risk and culture
approach hasnt led to new developments in sociology, further research
under the label of risk culture (Lash 2000) or socio-cultural approach
(Tulloch/Lupton 2003) could be understood as following from this early
and influential approach on culture and risk in sociology. Issues of
identity and those concerning emotion, affect, and the positive idea of
risk tend to be raised mainly in the context of this research stream.
A third approach, Governmentality, refers to Foucault (1991) and the
question of how institutions and organisations organize power and govern
populations. Whereas the strength of this approach is that the concrete
ascriptions and construction of subjectivity through institutions and
organisations came into view, some critique is directed at the concept of a
generalized subject (Lupton 1999, 102).
These three general research streams are supplemented by some
developments in the field of media research originally developed
separately from the main discourses on risk in sociology.
Since system theory on risk in the tradition of Luhmann is well
developed in Germany but hardly recognised in the international
discussion I added a brief discussion of the core arguments of the
approach.
In the discourses on risk in different disciplines, trust is always an
important issue. We include a first step in conceptualising the different
use of the term.

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II. Main issues of sociological discourse


The sociological view on risk: Risks as social constructions
Since Douglas worked on risk and culture, a central assumption in
sociology is that risk is a social construction in a particular historical and
cultural context, but there are different notions of constructivism. There
are two extreme positions. A radical constructivism in the style of some
post-modern authors claims that reality is linguistically constructed and
denies a world outside. The other position is the dualism of objectivism
and constructivism widely disseminated in the risk debate, which
interprets risks on the one hand as something that could be described
independently of the social context and on the other hand gives a
subjective and social interpretation of these objective risks (e.g. Slovic
1999).
Such a dualistic view of risk is unsatisfactory from the perspective of an
epistemological constructivism for two reasons.
(1) Studies of scientific knowledge shows that objective risk
descriptions are constructions of their own which hold as long as
no unexpected events occur, and additionally this (description of)
reality changes over time (e.g. Latour/Woolgar 1979).
(2) The second reason is that each side of the objective/subjective
division underestimates the other. There is no access to objective
risk independent from the social, and risk interpretations are not
absolutely independent from objective events although such events
are not immediately and objectively accessible.
In order to avoid the loss of awareness for the social construction of
objective risk sociological authors refer to constructivist ideas (e.g.
Krohn/Krcken 1993, Adam/Van Loon 2000, 2). Thus the approach
accepts that objective risks are not an absolute description of reality but
should be scrutinized in relation to their social functions and effects
(Wynne 2002).
The important assumption is not that there is no world outside the social,
but that there is no objective risk accessible beyond social interpretation;
rather there are hybrids of nature/culture (e.g. Latour 1993) which cannot
split off on one or the other side. Wynne, for example, calls the
epistemological standpoint recognizing the inseparable quality of culture
and nature constructivist realism (Wynne 2002, 462).
This insight has significant consequences for the distinction between lay
knowledge and scientific knowledge or lay and expert risk-perception
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and -taking. From a constructivism viewpoint, there is no epistemological


superiority between these different knowledge systems. They are just
different, and these differences in social production and reproduction are
important in the context of risk-taking.
The empirical relevance of these theoretical assumptions has shown that
there is no clear distinction between expert and lay knowledge (Wynne
1989, 1996). Expert knowledge has elements of lay knowledge in it and
vice versa. Furthermore scientific technological knowledge often lacks
the local lay knowledge of the practical reality outside the lab. For
example Wynne (1996) has shown how the scientific construction of the
world of farmers and sheep farming in a certain contaminated area
ignored substantially the local reality of farming (ibid 66).
That the differences between expert and local knowledge and reality are
still not sufficiently considered shows, for example, in a study on
Australian drug policies (Duff 2003). The ignorance of the range of nonexpert risk management strategies that exist among young drug users
undermines the efficacy of health promotion efforts within these groups.
The move to social constructionism raises serious problems of relativism.
These apply outside the area of risk and will not be discussed here, but it
is worth noting that qualitative work directed at understanding processes
of social construction carried out at the individual level has developed a
number of strategies in response to this issue.
From risk society to a general theory of risk in reflexive
modernity
The most well known approach in recent sociology of risk is the
perspective of risk society (Beck 1986, 1992). This approach had a very
large initial impact, but conceptual and empirical critiques have
developed subsequently.
One of the issues frequently mentioned refers to the concept of risk in
Becks risk-society. The criticism is that risk is narrowed to the
responses of technical and environmental risks as unforeseen
consequences of industrialization. This concept of a danger-consequence
society (Japp 2000), fails to grasp the more general societal development
regarding the concept of risk as a specific historical strategy to manage
uncertainties. This strategy is strongly linked to the idea of insurance and
the statistical methods to calculate uncertainties developed in modernity
(e.g. Ewald 1986). Many risk-theorists share this view (Krohn/Krcken
1993, Bon 1995, Japp 2000) but support a more general notion on risk
and risk-responses in current societies concerning the ways in which
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uncertainties are managed in general. The narrowed view on technical


and statistical risk management seems to be insufficient for the given
complexity concerning, for example, governmental risk-strategies and
rationalities (Dean 1999), emotional and aesthetic (Lash 2000) or sociocultural (Tulloch/Lupton 2003) perceptions and responses to risk.
Further critique aims at the assumption that new risks produce a general
anxiety which would support a higher public awareness of risk and
involve increasing the political commitment of the public. It has been
argued that this does not apply to all risks and neither do all people
respond in the same way (Tulloch/Lupton 2003). Other critiques state
that Beck failures to adequately define the relations and interplay
between institutional dynamism and social reflexes on the one hand and
self-referentiality and critical reflection on the other (Elliott 2002, 312)
While many writers agree that there is about a new quality to risks in
modernity (see discussion in Taylor-Gooby 2000) there is also some
insisting critique that little has changed in modernity (Dingwall 1999).
The historical-systematic analysis of risk of Bon (1995) goes beyond the
narrow concept of risk society but is still in line with a general theoretical
idea of reflexive modernization:
Bon argues that a societal approach to risk has to start with the concept
of uncertainty instead of risk. From this perspective, the probabilistic
concept of risk emerges as a special case of how security may be
constructed by mathematical calculations. In modernity, the repeated
experience of catastrophes showed the limits of absolute rationality in
probabilistic risk calculations. The awareness of such limits undermines
probability-grounded judgement and leads to a politicisation of risk
discourse.
The insight that calculability is a cultural construction only valid for
special cases and not an objective matter has lead neither to a
fundamental rejection of every risk-calculation nor to any subjective risk
construction. However, what is important is the change in interpretation
and foundation of probability-calculations. They have become subjective
and simultaneously related to contexts (Bon 1995, 302). Referring to
the concept of bounded rationality (March/Simon 1958) and Perrow
(1984), Bon emphasizes that social and cultural rationalities are both
interactive and limited. They are grounded not on one general principle
but on several particular concepts. They complement each other
situationally rather than systematically and in no way refer to an overall
rational plan. It looks like a cultural muddling through (Lindlom
1959) which could be described under a different perspective as political
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conflicts about risk and security. Bon concludes that it is not to be


expected that a decision-technology could be developed without any
reference to social context in the style of the concept of complete
rationality. Rather the experience of uncertainty has to be accepted as a
fundamental modern experience and the view on problems of
uncertainty has to be changed.
The problem of uncertainty should no longer be redefined as a problem of
how to produce order and certainty. From such a perspective it would be
already decided that the transformation of uncertainty into certainty,
disorder to order, and ambiguity into clearness would be the optimal and
the only solution that should be strived for. However, this view on
uncertainty is risky, because of the latent consequences of risk action or
second order dangers (Bon 1995, 80).
Against that, the transformation processes of uncertainty into certainty
should be subject to examination, in order to work out how this takes
place and what are their consequences. This can only be realized when
we focus in our research on uncertainty, ambiguity, contingency and
context-variance instead of certainty, unambiguity, complexity and
context-invariance. In this perspective diverse securities/certainties
appear not as absolute constructs, but as context-dependent social
constructions, following not a general rationality, but various specific
routes. Then a task for the sociology of risk would be to work out the
social profiles of different ways how risks are handled in different social
contexts.
This wider conceptual view on risk is reflected in these more recent
approaches and in empirical research on risk which refers to
uncertainty instead of risk, in order to show how different strategies are
used to transform (unmanageable) uncertainties into (manageable) risks.
Bon/Zinn 2003 and Zinn 2004, for example, argue in this direction by
interpreting risk as one strategy to construct certainty 1 . Other research
shows that referring to uncertainty instead of risk is a more fruitful
strategy to understand e.g. vaccination resistance (Hobson-West 2003,
279):
"An alternative way of thinking about vaccination resistance is through the
concept of uncertainty. Research into public attitudes to a technology may talk

Certainty defined as a form how uncertainty and certainty are related in order to
enable people, institutions or societies to act.

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about perception of risk, simply because it has been assumed that this is the
meaning of the debate to the public. In other words, research often looks for
risk, and finds it, when it isn't necessarily there (Hobson-West forthcoming). .
In the debate over vaccination, however, we need reminding that risk is just
one possible response to uncertainty, and represents our attempt to place order
on an uncertain world by making the 'incalculable calculable' (Beck 1994,
181)"

Risk and Culture and socio-cultural approach to risk


The risk and culture approach draws on the grid/group scheme of
Douglas and Wildavsky (1982, Douglas 1985, Thompson/Wildavsky
1982, Thompson et al. 1990) that was developed to understand different
logics of risk as they are expressed in social groups or organizations.
While the grid dimension describes the degree to which an individuals
life is circumscribed by externally imposed descriptions, the group
dimension represents the extent to which people are driven by or
restricted in thought and action by their commitment to a social unit
larger that the individual. The central assumption is that there is a relation
between modes of social organization and the responses to risk and that
culture are adequately represented by the dimensions of the grid/group
scheme.
Research on risk and culture can be divided into a quantitative
standardized approach and a qualitative approach. The attempt of
standardised studies on risk culture is to examine how peoples riskperception is culturally biased. It shows that only a minor part of variance
of perceived risk can be explained by culture (e.g. Sjberg 1997, 113;
Brenot et al. 1998, 730). A previous attempt to improve the standardised
instrument led to the disillusioned conclusion that the overall poor
power of cultural biases for explaining risk perception (Sjberg 1995)
was not improved by using more valid instruments (Rippl 2002, 161f.)
The central critique of the risk and culture approach concerns the
reduction of social risk-perception to the categories of cultural bias used.
Assumptions about risk perception are far more complex and dynamic
than the categories of the culture of risk approach imply (Renn et al.
1992; Boholm 1996).
Individual experiences of the social processes of risk perception may lead
them to adopt a broad range of unclear or contradictory views about the
magnitude of hazards. Any attempt to mask the complexity of the social
experience of risk perception in rigid conceptual abstractions may lead us
further away, rather than towards a more intimate understanding of the day-today reality in which people recognize and negotiate with hazards as risks.
(Wilkinson 2001b, 11)

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The perspective of the socio-cultural approach to risk could be


interpreted as a descendent of the cultural theory approach, relieved of the
functionalist view in the work of Douglas/Wildavsky. This approach,
shortly summarized in the following introductory statement of their work
on Risk and Everyday Life (2003, 1),
acknowledges that understandings about risk, and therefore the ways in
which risk is dealt with and experienced in everyday life, are inevitably
developed via membership of cultures and subcultures as well as through
personal experience. Risk knowledges, therefore, are historical and local.
What might be perceived to be risky in one era at a certain local may no
longer be viewed so in a later era, or in a different place. As a result, risk
knowledges are constantly contested and are subject to disputes and debates
over their nature, their control and whom is to blame for their creation.

Scott Lash develops a similar argument with the thesis of risk culture
(2000, 47ff.). He criticises the risk society approach which at least
accommodates an institutionally ordered society. The mode of
organization of risk society is a response to new challenges forced upon
the world by technologies and practices. Against this risk culture includes
all kinds of sense-making practices.
Risk cultures lie in non-institutional and anti-institutional sociations. Their
media are not procedural norms but substantive values. Their governing
figurations are not rules but symbols: they are less a hierarchical ordering that
a horizontal disordering. Their fluid quasi-membership is as likely to be
collective as individual, and their concern is less with utilitarian interests than
the fostering of the good life Risk cultures are based less in cognitive
than in aesthetic reflexivity. (ibid)

The advantage of these approaches is that thick descriptions of risk


taking and responses are produced. By doing so a high variety of
dimensions in riskperception and taking are described. It becomes clear,
for instance, that risks are multidimensional and that risk-taking could
be something valued positively as well as negatively (Lupton/Tulloch
2002, Tulloch/Lupton 2003). Furthermore, identity-formation has a big
influence on the ways people perceive and take risks (Tulloch/Lupton
2003, Mitchell et al. 2001).
Thus the socio-cultural approach could bring forward the still little
examined role of emotion in sociological risk research and theorising.
Often it is assumed without further empirical examination that there is a
direct link between social structure and emotion or risk consciousness and
societal anxiety (e.g. Furedi 1997, Hier 2002). Wilkinson (2001a) argues
against this widespread not empirically covered notion and for a more
theoretically elaborated approach in his conceptual work on Anxiety in
the risk society.
Summarizing some central results in this field of research:
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Socio-cultural research suggests the idea of a subject that is itself strongly


influenced by its cultural context, and builds up its own risk-knowledge
referring to different, competing, and sometimes contradictory knowledge
systems which are available in different life situations and stages. For this
reason, expert knowledge is only one point of reference among others.
People build up this private knowledge on the base of their experiences
during their life course and in interaction with their contexts, as others,
the media, science, and expert knowledge (Macgill 1989).
Additionally, these processes are embedded in their negotiation of their
own identities (e.g. Mitchell et al. 2001) which are themselves
emotionally and aesthetically embedded in the individuals everyday life
(Lash 2000, Tulloch/Lupton 2003). Thus risky behaviour like smoking
could be understood in the context of identity and the membership of
social groups (Denscombe 2001).
Social-structural indicators of social class, gender, ethnicity as a source of
resources and power (as well as a lack of the same) are suspected to
influence the risk perception and behaviour, but have produced different
results. While the quantitative analysis of Brenot et al. (1998) produced
no strong relations Tulloch and Lupton (2003, 132), found out on the base
of qualitative interview material that the interviewees reflexive
responses to risk were strongly shaped via such factors as gender, age,
occupation, nationality and sexual identity. Some earlier studies have
already shown how the lack of power could support risky behaviour,
despite better knowledge. Bloor (1995, cit. in Lupton 1999) demonstrated
by the example of female and male prostitutes how the lack of power
causes unsafe sex practices.
People produce ideas of risk or security by judgments oriented on general
factors and symbols. Lupton (1999, 119) quotes a study on young
Canadians which tended to choose their partner on an ascription based on
various general categories, learned during the life course (MatickaTyndale 1992).
The multi-layered results on the link between risk and emotion show that
there is additional theoretical work necessary. While Lupton and Tulloch
(2002) interpret emotions predominantly from the perspective of
voluntary risk-taking Zinn and Eer (2003, also Zinn 2004) point out
referring to the idea of a fundamental change in modernity that there is
also a reinterpretation of the uncontrollable and unforeseeable in
something positive observable.

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Governmentality and Risk


The literature on Governmentality and risk refers to Foucault (1991) and
his concept of a new style of governance in modernity. It is characterized
by the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and
reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercises of this
very specific albeit complex form of power (Foucault 1991, 102). There
is no general or homogenous approach in studies on governmentality, and
the same is true for the studies on governmentality and risk.
Governmentality is neither a homogeneous school or a closed sect
(Rose, 1999, 9) nor a single paradigm (Dean, 1999, 4). We can identify
five loose categories:
1. Some studies are limited to questions of how organisations govern
risk-problems (e.g. Joyce 2001) and how governance strategies change.
Flynn (2002) shows by the example of the Clinical Governance of the
National Health Service in England that it would be too simple to
interpret governmentality as a governing without government (Rhodes
1997). There are no self-organised interorganisational networks with a
significant autonomy given by the state or a mixture of different measures
which smoothly fit together in a general governmental strategy. Instead
his research on the clinical governance illustrates the contradictoriness
and paradoxes of the management of risk and regulation of professional
expertise. On the one hand, the governmentality perspective allows us
to identify the interrelationship of discourses and practices surrounding
medical power and state control in the health service and to see them as
being contested and negotiated, but Flynn (2002) emphasise the need of
intermediate concepts which capture the complexity of organizational
change and the process of negotiation.
2. Further studies refer to general discourses and their influence of
problem definitions and the constitution of groups at risk as youth
(Kelly 2001) or children (Brownlie 2001). Such studies show how
generalized social categories in institutional and media discourses
produce homogenous groups in relation to risk. On the one hand, these
categories do not justice to the diverse persons behind the categories (e.g.
Brownlie 2001, 519) and a new reality is entailed which changes for
example the whole notion of a social group. For example risk anxiety,
engendered by the desire to keep children safe, restrict their autonomy
and their opportunities to develop necessary skills to cope with the world
(Scott et al. 1998, 701).
3. Thirdly, the strategies used by different groups in response to such
discursive descriptions can be analysed, for example, the rejection to the
ascription as a risky group (e.g. Hier 2002).
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4. Some authors interpret studies on governmentality as an answer to the


limited explanatory power of the risk society approach, mainly focuses on
statistical and insurance risk-calculation strategies (Dean 1999). Many
more different strategies of governmentality exist, so this approach could
be interpreted as a strategy to elucidate the institutional, governmental
and discursive mechanisms of risk management. A narrow view on risk in
governmentality literature is criticized: this overlooks the significance of
uncertainty as a characteristic modality of liberal governance that relies
both on a creative constitution of the future with respect to positive and
enterprising dispositions of risk taking and on a corresponding stance of
reasonable foresight or everyday prudence (distinct from both statistical
and expert-based calculation) with respect to potential harms (OMalley
2000, 461)
5. On a societal level some authors interpret risk as a new meta-narrative
strongly linked to the (neo)liberal projects of government (Kelly 2001).
The awareness and scrutiny of risk are core features of a shift in social
policy from communitarian values to individual agency and choice. The
new emphasis reflects social and cultural changes that give top priority to
the construction of self-identity and lifestyle, while negating the
collectivist vision of a universalistic welfare state (e.g. Higgs 1998). In
different thematic fields (mostly crime, social welfare and health) it was
shown how the change of institutional policy and discourses construct
risk, thus to be at risk becomes something that is individually to be
answered (e.g. Kelly 2001, Higgins 2001, Joyner 2000).
Whereas the strength of this approach is that the concrete ascriptions and
constructions of subjectivity through institutions and organisations came
into view some criticism has been directed at the concept of a generalized
subject (Lupton 1999, 102). While the approach focuses on the
institutional constitution of the subject, individual responses to
institutional ascriptions are regularly underexposed. The notion of fight
back institutional ascriptions (Hier 2002) is interpreted as a reaction of a
special group as a whole. Differences in the individual responding to
ascriptions are still out of view.
Biography and Risk
Up to now one of the research streams likely to be significant for risk
research but rather ignored is Biographical Research. While risk
research has not referred to The turn to biographical methods in social
science (Chamberlayne et al. 2000), biographical research has paid little
attention to developments in risk research. As far as I know the only
exception is the research network SOSTRIS on the Social Strategies in
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Risk Society. The projects research was undertaken between 1996 and
1999, and was funded by the EU Targeted Socio-Economic Research
Programme 4 on Social Exclusion (Chamberlayne et al. 2002, 1). The aim
of the research was to investigate the experience of individuals who
found themselves excluded, or at risk of exclusion, from important
spheres of life in their societies (Chamberlayne et al. 2002, 1). The risk
categories the network referred to were early retirement, loss of work for
traditional industrial workers, unemployment among graduates, and
unemployment among unqualified young adults as well as single
parenthood and migration or membership of an ethnic minority.
Against quantitative and standardised research strategies, the focus of
biographical research is to explore the individuals life journey through
the view of the subject in their larger social contexts. Biographical
research asks how individuals experience the society they live in. The
purpose of the sociobiographical approach is to avoid the
overgeneralization and abstraction of many social research methods,
which often reduce individuals to aggregates, averages, or bundles of
variables, and which lose sight of the coherence of individual lives. The
sociobiographical method seeks to capture the dimensions of
consciousness and subjectivity, as well as the objective constraints that
shape individual lives. The focus is the subjects interpretation of life
situations, and the choices in response to them (ibid 3). In demarcation of
the rational choice approach subjects are seen as persons that choose
courses of action for emotional and moral reasons, as well as for material
ones (ibid 4)
Biographical research examines the difficulties of the individual subject
in managing life transitions and changes. By doing so it focuses on the
ways in which individuals maintain their identity or restore an injured
identity. The approach of biographical identity (Fischer-Rosenthal
2000) has the advantage that it contains a dimension of time in contrast to
identity constructions referring to values or orientations at a certain
moment or in a specific situation. This allows reconstructions of logics of
action or structuration behind current self-representations. It could be
supposed that such biographical constructions enable us to reconstruct the
complexity of biographical experiences in social contexts and the
influence of, for example, media on these experiences as a ground for risk
perception and response.
The media, risk and risk communication
The significant role of the media in the construction of and
communication about risk is widely recognized in risk-research as well in
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the sociological discourse on risk. However, their role is often less


theorized in sociological theorizing. While in the cultural approach to risk
(Douglas) media are not considered in Becks concept of the risk society,
a key role is ascribed to the communication media within the social
development of risk consciousness (e.g. Beck 1992, 23, 132f.).
But despite of the assumed special role of the media and this is not only
valid for the risk society approach no systematic reference to media
research and their results is been made. Instead simplified ideas of the
media and their operation and effects are used. Beck is criticized for this
interpretation, because he makes very little attempt to engage with the
literature of communication research, and further, he appears to be largely
unaware of the difficulty of theorizing the effects of mass media in light
of the discoveries of audience studies (Wilkinson 2001b, 12, 1999).
Media research as well as social-cultural studies (e.g. Tulloch/Lupton
2003) show that the assumption of a general risk awareness
underestimates the ambivalence of audiences attitudes towards the
information they receive about risk. They also underestimates the range
of partial, ambiguous and contradictory views about the benefits and
wisdom of the scientific knowledge individuals hold (Wilkinson 2001b,
13f.) and the contradictions, incoherence and disagreement which
comprise the ways in which these groups actively make sense of the
threat posed by environmental hazards (Irwin et al. 1999, 1312).
In the 1990s a central shift in media research took place that is of high
significance for the question of how risk, risk perception and risk taking
should be examined. The classical approach that was focussed on the
objectivity, rationality and accuracy of media coverage (e.g. Freudenburg
et al. 1996, Wilson 2000) got into serious difficulties. On the one hand
the fundamental assumption that the media should support the public in
making adequate judgements by giving objective information met the
problem that often such objective knowledge is not available (Murdock et
al. 2003, Kitzinger 1999, Adams 1995, 194f.). On the other hand, the
implicit and widely disseminated assumption of a that media reports have
a determining influence upon public risk perception (e.g. Spencer/Triche
1994; Renn et al. 1992) was scrutinized by the insight, that the subject
have a relatively more active role concerning the interpretation of and
response to risk.
Nowadays, attention is paid to the logic of news production and the
influence of social contexts and the social and cultural embeddedness of
the individuals in their own biographical experiences, their everyday life
and media as one context among others receives an increasing amount of
attention (Murdock et al. 2003, Tulloch 2000, 197).

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Thus, assumptions, like the notion of a general risk consciousness in the


risk society approach (Beck 1992) or a determining influence of the mass
media on the public (e.g. Adams 1995, Kasperson/Kasperson 1996),
could be criticized at least in two ways:
Studies from the perspective of the social-cultural approach to risk
show that risks are discursively constructed in everyday life
referring to the mass media, individual experience/biography, local
memory, moral convictions and personal judgments. The mass
media are only one among other important factors (Tulloch 2000,
197).
Quantitative surveys on general risk awareness may well give little
information on peoples individual assumptions about the risks that
they themselves face a point made by the impersonal impact
hypothesis (Wilkinson 2001b, 13; Dickens 1992; Coleman 1993).
While the literature on the influence of the mass media on public and
individual risk perceptions shows diverse results and the broad range of
studies on risk communication and media coverage make it difficult for
us to generate clear assumptions. The wide range of different findings
cannot be explained by a set of general roles or logics, rather they are
clearly influenced by the substantive nature of the particular topic under
consideration (Kitzinger 1999, 57) 2 and/or they are the result of specific
situational constellations. Studies which compare media coverage at
different points in time tend to show that the social and political context
is essential for understanding risk-reporting and their changes over time
(Kitzinger 1999, 59). It could be concluded that research on the framing
of risk-perception by the media can only fully be understood by
simultaneous analysis of the context in which such risk-reports are
embedded and a carefully ethnographic analysis of the individuals
embeddedness in cultural and social contexts and biographical
experiences.
The system theory approach to risk
The system theory approach to risk is advocated by Japp (1996, 2000).
The general research question in the context of this approach is how the
ability of society to evolve could be improved and how the ability to
solve problems could be increased. The original answer is by means of
functional differentiation in societal sub-areas or subsystems like
economy, justice, science etc. Since functional differentiation is limited,
2

Compare Kitzinger 1999, 62ff. for an overview of some more stable research results.

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semantics are needed which cover different societal functions. Such


united semantics focus for example on the Lebenswelt or are produced
by social movements. Such semantics slow down the specialized societal
decision-making by perhaps giving away advantages, but this is the price
for an ecological rational society.
Societal subsystems refer to united semantics when they produce images
of the reality they act in. Through structural coupling to other subsystems
their realities become more complex and other rationalities might come
into view, but the specific logic of each subsystem remains (otherwise it
would be dissolved).
How could society work on these unsolvable contradictions of logic, and
the self-amplification of danger- and risk-communications? The answer
Japp gives in the language of system theory is: first and second order
observations have to be combined. In a more intelligible language this
means that neither the rationality of partial rationality (for example
neighbours of a nuclear power station) nor the public interest in general
should be maximized, but a temporal combination of both is needed.
To illustrate his argument Japp presents two examples:
In the first example (Giegel 1992) the partial interests of residents
become embedded in a more general public interest so that suboptimal
solutions become acceptable for the advantage of the public welfare. This
kind of strategy rests on the acknowledgement and self-commitment to a
public interest.
In the second example Wiesenthal (1990, 153) discusses, referring to
March/Olsen, a reweighing of a pure instrumental rationality to a more
symbolic rationality. The emphasis is than more on the change of
attention than on selection and more on innovation than on participation.
However such strategies do not lead to definite solutions but to new
uncertainties.
Thus, strategies of evolutionary policy of risk-administration (Japp
2000, 92f.) cannot produce substantial rationality in the sense of single
right decisions or general obligatory purposes and reasonable consensus.
In order to ensure more complex realities an observation of the results is
needed. The uncertainty of the future is used to open opportunities for
action, but the observation of the results is needed in order to intervene if
it seems to be reasonable.
Trust is a central issue in Japps considerations. In his view trust is
needed to generate the readiness for risk-taking. With only prevention but
not trust, there are no chances to learn, and only hope or belief but no
risky advance concession would be made (Japp 2000, 91).
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The problem is that in several areas there is no possibility to learn by trial


and error. Where catastrophes are seen as possible the question of
rationality becomes so urgent that long-term learning (for example mad
cow disease, nuclear power) by trial and error is not tolerated (Perrow
1984). Under such conditions the ability to act can only be protected by
trust e.g. in systems as science, technology or government due to a lack of
information or of transparency (Esposito 1997). Trust is then quite
rational!

Trust
Since the erosion of public trust in institutions like the government, the
media, the churches or the family (Pharr/Putnam 2000, Inglehart 1999),
trust attracts more and more attention in social sciences. Although trust
seems to be a significant variable in risk perception as well as rational
decision-making or social relations, there is still no general model of trust
developed. The usage of the term by scientists as well as by lay people is
unsystematic and it is often difficult to decide whether trust or some other
construction is being measured in a standardized survey. This suggests
that trust is a multidimensional construct, not easy to conceptualise and
referring to different issues, such as self-esteem or belief.
There are more and more attempts to conceptualise the notion of trust in
sociology (e.g. Misztal 1996, Mlling 2001, Nuissl 2002) but the early
statement that social science research on trust has produced a good deal
of conceptual confusion regarding the meaning of trust and its place in
social life (Lewis/Weigert 1985, 975) seems to be still valid.
This systematic work leads to some general insights: Trust is a middle
state between knowledge and ignorance (Simmel 1968, 393). Trust is on
the one hand incompatible with complete ignorance of the possibility and
probability of future events, and on the other hand with emphatic belief
when the anticipation of disappointment is excluded. Someone who trusts
has an expectation directed to a special event. The expectations are based
on the ground of incomplete knowledge about the probability and
incomplete control about the occurrence of the event. Trust is of
relevance for action and has consequences for the trusting agent if trust is
confirmed or disappointed. Thus, trust is connected with risk (Nuissl
2002, 89f.).
Up to now there have been few attempts to work out a systematic scheme
of different forms of trust in sociology. Psychological work in this area
appears to be more developed, for example the classification of Oswald
(1994, 122). He distinguishes between trust in contracts, trust in
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friendship and trust in love on the one hand, and trust in foreign issues
and trust in systems on the other. These different kinds of trust may be
distinguished along four dimensions, the transparency of rules, the
assumed reliability, the tolerance of irregularities and the suggestion of
goodwill. Regarding the problem of risk, trust in contracts and in systems
(as science and government) is of special significance.
In the case of trust in contracts the rules are clear and the assumed
reliability is high whereas the tolerance of irregularities is low. The
category of trust in systems is analytically not well developed. We can
assume that the transparency of rules is low, the assumed reliability is
relatively high and the tolerance of irregularities is low (Bon).
However, sociological theories which suppose a general change in
modernity (Beck, Giddens) assume that with the erosion of traditional
institutions and scientific knowledge trust becomes an issue more often
produced actively by individuals than institutionally guaranteed.
Independent from the insight that social action in general is dependent
more or less on trust there empirical results in the context of risk
perception and risk taking indicate:
Trust is much easier to destroy than to built.
If trust is once undermined it is more difficult to restore it.
Familiarity with a place, a situation or a person produces trust.
Persons will develop trust if a person or situation has ascriptive
characteristics positively valued.
Trust seems to be something that is produced individually by experience
and over time and cant be immediately and with purpose be produced by
organizations or governments.
Such a more complex view on trust is supported by risk-communication
studies which unsuccessfully try to clear up the relationship between trust
in information source and impact of information on risk perceptions
(Frewer et al. 2003, 1131f.).
International studies show that societal factors influence the trust of
people in society. A study that tests six theories of trust by data from
seven societies (1999-2001) produce the following results
(Delhey/Newton 2003):
Social trust tends to be high among citizens who believe that there
are few severe social conflicts and where the sense of public safety
is high.

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Social networks are associated with trust; those who are successful
in life trust more, or are more inclined by their personal experience
to do so.
Finally individual theories seem to work best in societies with
higher levels of trust, and societal ones in societies with lower
levels of trust.
Anheier and Kendall (2002, 347) mention a systematic difference in the
conceptualisations of trust by economists and sociologists. In the realm
of economics, trust in market transactions is defined as an efficient
mechanism to economize on transaction costs. Trust is something
rationally given or refused (e.g. Coleman 1990). In sociology the idea of
trust is something given in advance and is taken for granted. Trust may be
developed by routines (Giddens 1990, 33), the duration of experiences,
shared values or positive valued characteristics. Trust is for sociologists
something that is explicitly not rationally produced.

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Journals
British Journal of Sociology

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Canadian Journal of Sociology


Current Sociology
Health, Risk & Society
Journal of Risk Research
Risk Analysis
Sociology

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